Hybrid cloud is bringing former customers back to Rackspace

The hybrid cloud, one of the latest innovations in cloud computing, is helping Rackspace Inc. (NYSE: RAX) to win new business and even lure back some old customers.

Last summer, Rackspace used the hybrid cloud to ride to the rescue of Schlitterbahn,

the New Braunfels-based water-park company, which had been experiencing server problems right before one of the busiest times of its business cycle.

Terri Adams, chief operating officer for Schlitterbahn, says Rackspace peformed exceptionally when called in suddenly to migrate Schlitterbahn’s website to servers with more capacity.

“Rackspace came through for us with flying colors,” Adams says. “They exceeded our expectations.”

Adams says her company made a “poor decision” several years earlier when they left Rackspace to go with another hosting company. She says they are not likely to make that mistake again.

“You would have a hard time prying us away from them now,” Adams says. “They are the best of the best.”

John Engates, chief technology officer for Rackspace, says for customers like Schlitterbahn and Fiesta Texas, the hybrid cloud is an ideal option because of its flexibility and ability to scale up or down as demand dictates.

Combination service

The hybrid cloud is a computer hosting service that combines traditional in-house managed servers on a private network with external public servers in an open environment. This allows an organization to keep its sensitive data contained in-house while also having access to nearly unlimited server space in a moment’s notice.

“We use the hybrid cloud to help companies with capacity challenges,” Engates says. “We have a lot of customers who have high demand at certain times of the year and then go almost dormant at other times. The ability to scale up and down quickly is crucial for their business model.”

For these customers, Rackspace can provide a certain amount of fixed space on in-house servers (the traditional model) and also provide access to cloud servers on monthly, daily or even hourly basis.

“That flexibility is really important for companies that do not have a constant year-round demand,” Engates says.

In past years, it might take several weeks for a company to add server capacity as new servers had to be built and physically added to an internal network. But now with access to virtual servers in an open cloud environment these companies have the ability to expand their server capacity almost instantaneously at the flip of a switch.

Adams says Schlitterbahn is becoming more of a year-round enterprise, although there are still times when the company knows it will experience higher demand, such as the start of summer and around most holidays.

“That is why I am happy that we can rely on a company like Rackspace to provide the support we need whenever we need it,”